This essay was originally published by The Hill on April 14, 2026.

If democracy is our nation’s engine, then political protest is its gas pedal — and it has been since our founding. Early Americans rose up to protest the tyranny of the Stamp Act and the Tea Act, fighting taxation without representation and planting the seeds of independence. Two decades later, they enshrined the freedom to protest in the First Amendment.

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All throughout America’s 250 years, that freedom has given millions the voice to demand change. It spearheaded the fight against segregation. It secured voting rights for women. And today, Americans gather in public parks and city streets for No Kings rallies, the March for Life and countless other political and social causes.

But a lawsuit that has snaked through the courts for eight years threatens our prized freedom to protest, exposing protesters to vast damages for acts they didn’t commit and chilling Americans from making their voices heard.

That should trouble any freedom-loving American.

In 2016, DeRay McKesson joined a protest against the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling, during which a police officer was hit with a rock. But DeRay did not throw the rock. Nor did he ask anybody to throw rocks or engage in any other violence.

Yet the officer sued McKesson, instead of the rock-thrower. On what basis, you ask? The officer claims he was responsible for organizing the protest.

If you’re wondering whether the First Amendment protects against such a lawsuit, let’s be clear that it does. Nearly 35 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware that the First Amendment shields protest leaders from lawsuits, absent a few narrow exceptions, resulting from some protestors engaging in violent acts.

That makes sense. After all, given how important the freedom of protest has been to America’s history and advancement, we wouldn’t want to silence political protesters or prevent protests from ever being organized because of the threat of lawsuits.

But after eight years, McKesson still faces a lawsuit for doing no more than exercising his First Amendment rights. Why? A federal appeals court has ruled that he must face trial because he could “reasonably foreseeable” that “organizing the protest” would result in a random protester throwing a rock that hit a police officer.

That standard is called “negligence,” and it is an apt standard for car crashes and botched surgeries. But it has no place when political speech is threatened.

In fact, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the Constitution requires some subjective intent — not mere negligence — to prosecute someone for making a true threat. If that is the case, negligence is nowhere near enough to hold a protest organizer liable for something he didn’t do.

McKesson’s case poses high stakes for freedom of speech. If protesters face six- or seven-figure damage awards for acts they didn’t commit, the inevitable result will be to chill Americans from participating in the very protests upon which our nation is built. And make no mistake — those figures are not hypothetical.

Just consider the protest leaders in Claiborne Hardware, who faced having to pay a judgment over $1 million before the Supreme Court stepped in and upheld their constitutional freedoms.

You might disagree with McKesson’s message, or that of Black Lives Matter, the group he helped lead. That is your First Amendment right, just as much as it is McKesson’s right to protest or even organize a political protest and not be dragged through court for nearly a decade because of someone else’s actions. But when the rights of one are under threat, all our rights are under threat. If McKesson can face years of costly and anxiety-producing court proceedings and liability for protesting, so can anyone.

Don’t let this alarm bell deter you from peacefully protesting. Rather, keep exercising your First Amendment rights with pride and vigor. In a year when we are commemorating our nation’s 250th birthday, using your voice to stand up for the freedom to protest that inspired our founding is a great way to celebrate.

In the meantime, cross your fingers and pray that McKesson finally gets the outcome the Constitution promises.

Declining trust in higher education is mostly a self-inflicted wound, a Yale panel concluded in a report released on April 10. The primary reasons given are high costs, questionable admissions practices, and public concerns over freedom of speech and political bias. The erosion of free speech on campus is so severe, the panel said, that even tenured faculty who “have some of the strongest protections” for speech “refrain from saying what they really think.”

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This jibes with data from FIRE’s 2024 faculty survey, which found that more than one-third of respondents said they tone down their writing for fear of controversy, and more than one-fourth said they watch what they say for the same reason. So what does the Yale report reveal? And is Yale finally on the mending path?

What the report says

Even before we dive in, it’s worth noting that this report shows a major Ivy League institution conducting a public self-interrogation, and committing to do better. For that alone, Yale deserves some credit. Self-reflection on these matters is always in short supply, especially on the most prestigious campuses.

As for the report itself, after listing the three causes noted above, the panel makes 10 recommendations. Among them, it says Yale should refocus its mission on creating knowledge through research and teaching that knowledge to its student body. It says the school should strengthen the conditions on campus for free speech and formally adopt a set of principles of academic freedom, which will be set forth by a faculty committee at the end of this fall semester. It also says the school should make education more affordable and that it should reform admissions to prioritize academic merit, urging the school to promote intellectual diversity and open debate.

The panel asks the university to combat what it describes as a climate of “self-censorship driven by fear of personal attack, academic retaliation, or other political pressure.” It also cites the university’s own policy concerning “institutional voice,” which restrains Yale leadership from speaking out on major political issues unless those issues directly implicate the university’s mission and operations. Overall, the report urges the university to take concrete steps to address concerns that FIRE has repeatedly raised about campuses more broadly.

What this means

Whether this effort at reform will actually work is an open question. To be sure, strong leadership on free speech can help a university reduce its number of controversies. The shocking number of students who report being investigated or punished for their speech on campus suggests the problem is massive, and that the solution must be at least partly institutional. This can begin with an honest reflection on past failures and basic commitment to free speech. Yale has already taken a first step in that regard.

At a time when prominent universities are removing ideas they dislike from the classroom, eliminating entire academic programs they dislike, and striking deals with the government as international students are targeted for their speech, it’s refreshing to see one of the Ancient Eight self-reflect and vow to do better.

America’s declining trust in institutions — in Congress, the media, even the scientific community — hits much harder as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding this year. Higher education has not been spared from this crisis. But the same polls that show declining trust also show Americans want to trust again. They just need to see reasons to do so. Yale’s report gets the big things right. Now the question is whether it can make those big things happen.

California lawmakers are considering two bills that would make “anti-hate speech training” a requirement. Assembly Bill 1803 would require employers with five or more employees to incorporate such training into existing, already-mandated sexual harassment prevention programs. Under Assembly Bill 1578, a similar training would be mandated for all state and local elected officials.

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But “hate speech” includes speech protected by the First Amendment — speech the government has no business trying to snuff out with legal mandates. But also, it has no clear or consistent definition. Because of that vagueness, efforts to regulate “hate speech” risk giving the government sweeping authority to suppress views it doesn’t like. Internationally, similar laws have indeed often been used to silence political dissent. Adopting “hate speech” into law, even under the perhaps benign-sounding “anti-hate speech training,” blurs the line between unlawful conduct and protected expression.

Existing California law already requires sexual harassment training. That training is designed to provide “information and practical guidance regarding the federal and state statutory provisions concerning the prohibition against and the prevention and correction of sexual harassment and the remedies available to victims of sexual harassment in employment.” Of course, the state can regulate workplace conduct, including unlawful sexual discrimination and harassment. The state can also require employees to get training in such areas. But these bills go further.

As the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee’s analysis of AB 1803 acknowledges, “hate speech itself is not illegal but can violate employment law if it rises to an actionable level of workplace harassment or discrimination.” The problem is, most common definitions of “hate speech” end up including a lot of speech that the Constitution actually protects. In fact, even the examples used by the committee’s analysis include speech that would be protected under the First Amendment.

Recent amendments to AB 1803, citing speech that “vilifies, humiliates, or incites hatred” based on protected characteristics, do little to resolve this problem. Terms like “vilify,” “humiliate,” and “incite hatred” lack clear legal meaning, so you end up with a vague mandate that fails to distinguish between protected speech and unprotected conduct — and that vagueness has consequences.

Private employers, uncertain about how to comply, are likely to err on the side of caution by discouraging or restricting lawful speech in the workplace. Many contentious public issues, such as the war in Ukraine or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, generate strongly held and opposing views about what constitutes offensive or even “hateful” expression. Requiring employers to adopt or promote particular viewpoints about such speech risks infringing the First Amendment rights of both private employers and employees.

The government does have greater leeway when it comes to its own speech, which means legislation can require public agencies to conduct such training for elected officials. But even there, perhaps especially there, caution is warranted. Training that frames protected expression as something government agencies should suppress risks encouraging the use of public office to silence lawful speech. As Jonathan Rauch has written, “The big problem for proponents of hate-speech laws and codes is that they can never explain where to draw a stable and consistent line between hate speech and vigorous criticism, or who exactly can be trusted to draw it. The reason is that there is no such line.”

We have seen these ideas tried on campuses, and we have seen them fail time and time again. We should not be exporting them to workplaces at large or into the offices of elected officials.

Training that makes clear that certain protected expression should be avoided is nothing new. FIRE has raised similar concerns in the context of mandatory diversity training on college campuses. Such training can extend beyond fostering a respectful or inclusive environment and instead signal which viewpoints are acceptable, pressuring participants toward ideological conformity. To give a couple of examples:

• At the University of Oklahoma in 2020, participants in a mandatory diversity training program had to keep retrying questions until they chose statements acknowledging their agreement with the University’s chosen political viewpoints.

• At Boston University (which, as a private institution, was offending academic freedom but not the First Amendment) in 2021, faculty members were required to choose the institution’s preferred answers to contested social and political questions to advance, compelling their speech.

Another place where efforts to limit “hate speech” often backfires is on campus, where it ends up chilling and policing basic political expression as well as research speech, precisely because hate is subjective.

• At San Francisco State University in 2007, students were charged with harassment and creating a hostile environment for protesting terror groups. Why? They had stepped on the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, which have the word “Allah” on them. Months later, a federal judge ultimately barred the university’s enforcement of its policy.

• Infamously, and also in 2007, a student employee at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis was charged with racial harassment because, during his work breaks, he read the book Notre Dame vs. The Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. A shop steward told him reading the book (about a 1924 street fight between students and Klan members and how students handled anti-Catholic prejudice) was like bringing pornography to work.

And attempts to regulate speech internationally have resulted in similar chills. For instance, in 2023 alone, British police arrested more than 12,000 people for their online speech under two laws, the Communications Act of 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act of 1988. People have been arrested for sharing memes, arguing online, and insulting people in conversations with third parties.

California can and should combat unlawful discriminatory and sexual harassment. But trying to combat the ambiguous concept of “hate speech” is unwise, and in most cases, unconstitutional.

“In a truly free society, we enjoy the right to debate and mock those with unsavory views to prove them wrong in the court of public opinion. What we don’t have the right to do is to prevent them from speaking entirely. Free speech is not valuable because it makes us comfortable. It is valuable because it protects the right to hear and challenge even the most offensive ideas.”

—Hannah Owens Pierre, a Yale sophomore, on Sen. Rick Scott saying the school should lose federal funding over a planned debate involving streamer Hasan Piker.

FBI director sues The Atlantic

FBI Director Kash Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic over a report that his “excessive drinking” caused him to miss meetings and mysteriously disappear at times, that in April he had a “freak-out” over being fired, and that his behavior “resulted in normally unflappable agents ‘losing their shit.’”

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In New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court reversed a defamation verdict over the paper’s sensationalist coverage of police actions in Montgomery, Alabama, because police commissioner LB Sullivan couldn’t show “actual malice,” meaning the paper knew it was lying or did not care — setting a high bar that Patel must now clear.

Texas Tech censors sex and gender courses

Texas Tech University System announced a “strict prohibition” on all academic programs “centered on” sex and gender, giving its schools only two months to comply.

“Forget walking on eggshells,” writes in a recent piece, “Faculty now need to walk across the verbal equivalent of broken glass if they dare include material that could conceivably violate these rules.”

What critics get wrong about the Charlie Kirk Act

Tennessee lawmakers are advancing the “Charlie Kirk Act,” which would require public universities to adopt the Chicago Statement and prohibit retaliation against professors for their speech. As Michael Hurley explains:

The Charlie Kirk Act will allow members of the campus community to speak with renewed confidence. Professors can contest university positions with more protection against retaliation. Students and faculty can invite speakers without worrying that the school will shut them down because others protest. Bottom line: that’s a significant win for free expression at Tennessee’s public universities.

Below the fold

• FCC Director Brendan Carr made yet another effort to regulate content by floating the idea of TV ratings for transgender material. But with “ratings” legislation, as Bob Corn-Revere once wrote, “The circuitry in and of itself is neutral. It does nothing until someone decides what programs should be blocked.”

• In response to the FBI investigating a New York Times journalist for reporting on Patel’s girlfriend receiving government security and transportation, recently commented, “Reaching out to the subject of a story with questions is not ‘stalking.’ It’s routine journalism at the core of the First Amendment.”

• English universities that don’t protect free speech could face fines of £500,000 ($675,078) as the UK tackles an ongoing “culture of fear” on campuses.

In the frame

Hulu just released an anthology produced by Jimmy Kimmel — 4X20: Quick Hits — made up of four 20-minute documentaries about cannabis. One of the films tells the story of the magazine High Times, directed by Kyle Thrash, who says the film is not really about marijuana, but about free speech.

High Times faced relentless censorship efforts in its early days, and was essentially run “as an act of First Amendment defiance,” the magazine reports in a review of the Hulu series. The review goes on to quote Thrash as saying, “Free speech leads to being able to speak about the things we want to speak about, which is cannabis. So they are so intertwined.”

Terms of service

In a new op-ed for R Street, “AI, free speech, and America’s real advantage over China,” and argue that while China’s censorship undermines its ability to advanced AI, the United States risks weakening its own advantage in this area by imposing speech-constraining AI regulations. Many proposed laws pressure developers to produce sanitized, government-aligned outputs that could harm both free expression and the quality of AI systems. America’s strength, they claim, lies in its tradition of open inquiry and free speech. Abandoning those principles will only jeopardize innovation and our competitive edge over China.

This week in history

On April 22, 1940, the Supreme Court decided Thornhill v. Alabama. Byron Thornhill, a union member, had joined a picket line protesting his former employer when he was arrested under an Alabama law that banned loitering and picketing near businesses “without a just cause or legal excuse.” Notably, he was the only picketer charged under the statute. In an 8–1 ruling, the Court struck down the law, holding that labor disputes are not just private matters, but issues of public concern. The Court said being able to openly discuss one’s working conditions is essential to democracy.

By the numbers

​​Two of the most controversial student groups in the country, Students for Justice in Palestine and Turning Point USA, have next to nothing in common — except that both are frequently targeted for their speech. Together, they account for 24% of all group entries in FIRE’s Students Under Fire database going back to 2020. But these groups operate in very different ways, and face very different types of censorship. This week, we dive into the data behind America’s most controversial student groups.

Two of the most visible student groups in the country — Students for Justice in Palestine and Turning Point USA — have next to nothing in common except: both are frequently targeted for their protected speech. Together, they account for 24% of all group entries in FIRE’s Students Under Fire database going back to 2020.

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In case you don’t know these two groups, one advocates for Palestinians while the other advocates for conservatives, and they are no strangers to controversy. For example, in February 2026, Israel’s consul general in New York sent a letter to leaders at CUNY School of Law demanding the cancellation of an event organized by the school’s SJP chapter, which described Hamas’ tunnel network as “decolonial land use.” And in February 2021, student groups at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas demanded the derecognition of TPUSA over allegations that the national Turning Point Action “bused domestic terrorists to the Capitol and attacked our democracy.”

But this is not to suggest that the two groups are themselves perfect on free speech. SJP is known to disrupt campus events, such as the 2024 discussion between Bari Weiss and Frank Bruni at UNC Chapel Hill. TPUSA doesn’t really do that, though their national organization does maintain a Professor Watchlist to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Some entries in the watchlist include the contact information for administrators, ostensibly for visitors to file complaints.

Nevertheless, both groups are provocative. And both claim their speech is uniquely under assault. SJP says there is a “Palestine exception,” a pattern of discrimination against those advocating for Palestinians or against Israel. TPUSA says campuses are overrun with intolerant “woke leftists” who want to silence conservative voices. But the data tells a more complex narrative, one in which censorship on each side is real, yet also asymmetric.

Who started it?

Even a cursory glance at the data immediately reveals that censorship efforts against these two groups come from completely different places.

Roughly 75% of censorship efforts against TPUSA come from their fellow students, compared to only 20% against SJP. Students are by far the main censors targeting TPUSA. Administrators do too, to a lesser degree. And they are not really targeted by politicians. By contrast, SJP’s censors strike a closer balance among all three groups, but SJP experiences about seven times as many censorship efforts from politicians as TPUSA.

How are they punished?

Given the sources of these censorship efforts, it’s little surprise that these two groups would end up facing different sets of consequences for their speech. After all, administrators respond with a different range of disciplinary options than student governments.

As it turns out, 51% of all campaigns against SJP result in some sort of administrative punishment, compared to only 29% for TPUSA. But, interestingly, both groups are being punished at lower rates than all other student groups combined.

While SJP faces administrative punishment more often than TPUSA, these dealings are often less consequential. About 32% of administrative punishments against TPUSA result in the denial or loss of recognition. That’s above the average for all other student groups, which is only 10%, and far more than the 7% for SJP.

This pattern is even more pronounced when looking at student governments. Not only do student governments discipline TPUSA far more often than SJP — 26% vs. 2% — but they also deny or revoke TPUSA’s recognition practically every time (92%).

What about admins?

How institutions respond to speech controversies matters, which is why FIRE endorses institutional neutrality, because even well-intentioned statements of such a nature can have a chilling effect. And when it comes to SJP and TPUSA, the data is clear: administrators are far more likely to speak out against SJP than other groups.

When SJP is the target of a speech controversy, administrators issue public statements condemning its expression about a third of the time (30%), or double the rate of all other groups and nearly four times as often as they do in response to speech controversies involving TPUSA (8%). When it comes to actual punishments of these groups, the numbers get even worse: administrators condemn SJP’s expression up to 45% of the time, other groups 21% of the time, and TPUSA only 14% of the time.

On top of that, when TPUSA is the target, roughly 24% of the time administrators put out what we call an “Honor Roll” statement explicitly supporting the students’ expressive rights. In other words, the administrators speak up in the students’ defense. That’s twice as often as they do when other groups face down a censorship campaign, and thrice as often as they do when it’s SJP (8%).

What does it all mean?

As is so often the case when it comes to campus censorship, all sides have good reason to complain. The winds of campus censorship highlighted in last year’s Students Under Fire report have only grown stronger, with 2025 setting records for all the wrong reasons. So how do we slow them down and create a healthier climate for all students?

For starters, administrators can adopt an official position of institutional neutrality and better educate student governments, which must often act as agents of the institution, on the importance of freedom of speech. Student governments can likewise adopt neutral positions, recognizing that when they deny certain groups status or access to resources, they only deepen conflict and fuel resentment.

We live in divided times. If students are discouraged or prohibited from even talking across differences, that divide will not just persist, it will grow, and for the worst possible reason: not because they simply come to different conclusions on important issues, but because they don’t even know or understand what their opponents think.

East Dallas in the 90s was riddled with crime and turf wars. Growing up there, Victor Quiñonez found solace in his art. He was only four the first time his father, a day laborer, got deported back to Mexico. It happened several times during his childhood, so immigration law became a theme in his family life — and later, in his art.

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It turns out that he was good at art, too. His talents got him into Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Then he got a full-ride scholarship to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Now, he’s a celebrated artist, going by the tag “Marka27,” and exhibits his work across the country.

This past February, Quiñonez had a scheduled installation titled Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá (Not From Here, Not From There) at the University of North Texas. The exhibit features giant resin paletas (Mexican popsicles) with seals that read “U.S. Department of Stolen Land Security” and “U.S. Inhumane and Cruelty Enforcement.”

But fearing political repercussions, UNT Dean Karen Hutzel canceled the exhibition. Worse, under the cloak of night, school officials later removed student sidewalk chalk messages, posters, and other materials protesting the exhibit’s cancellation. While school administrators can regulate the time, place, and manner of such protests on campus, they must do so in a viewpoint-neutral way — and all the available information suggests that the school specifically singled out these protest messages for erasure.

The student group NOISE claims its messages, art, and flowers in honor of the exhibit were “violently taken and ripped apart in the dark of the night” at the direction of school officials. The staff who were responsible for the removal said they were told to do so by school lawyers — and that it was not part of their regular job duties.

UNT has the right to clear protest materials that obstruct walkways or prevent other normal uses of its space. But chalk and posters generally don’t do that, and the off-hours power-washing suggests the school might not be cleaning up campus so much as silencing its critics.

The Supreme Court has been extremely clear about such efforts. It has ruled that targeting expression based on its viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” adding that government actors (including public universities) must “abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker” motivates the restriction. In addition, the Court said, when regulations or authorities target “particular views taken by speakers,” the violation “is all the more blatant.”

Is that what happened here? Consider: UNT policy explicitly says “chalking on University sidewalks is permissible.” And while the school does prohibit chalking on vertical structures like walls and covered areas such as atriums, video footage shows that at least some of the chalking removed at the behest of administrators was on university sidewalk space outside the College of Visual Arts & Design building, where school policy explicitly allows chalking. Even when it comes to chalking in restricted areas, staff comments suggest the school normally just lets the elements wash the messages away.

As happens so often in censorship cases, UNT’s attempts to silence dissent have only fanned the flames. The National Coalition Against Censorship and the ACLU of Texas rightly called out the school with a not-so-subtle mobile billboard truck earlier this month. Around the same time, the Dallas Observer ran the story, “An Act of Censorship Leaves UNT Facing an Identity Crisis.”

Texas is censoring its faculty at industrial scale. And it’s ground zero for America’s latest crisis in artistic freedom. The Lone Star State saw a police raid seize art off the walls from a museum last year, recalling the hysteria of the Mapplethorpe persecutions from the 1980s. But the students at UNT who staged a protest funeral for artistic freedom in Dallas this spring aren’t going to let freedom of expression die in Texas. UNT graduating arts students are protesting the school’s art censorship by boycotting the traditional on-campus “Senior Exit Show” this April in favor of an off-campus alternative. Their protest chalkings were clearly protected by the First Amendment, too.

Among the messages posted by students were “SILENCING IS POLICY” and “STOP SILENCING STUDENTS YOU ARE MEANT TO PROTECT.” UNT’s lack of self-awareness in silencing such messages is stunning.

UNT is a public university, and following the First Amendment is not optional. It must stop targeting student criticisms for erasure. On March 4, FIRE wrote to UNT regarding its decision to shutter Quiñonez’s art exhibition and its threats of possible future censorship of faculty and students whose expression falls outside the university’s comfort zone. Now, just one month later, it appears some of those threats — namely silencing student expression on themes related to the canceled exhibition — have materialized. UNT must cease its war on free expression on campus and recommit to the First Amendment — because the First Amendment means nothing if administrators can make disfavored speech disappear overnight.

A new bill under consideration in California is facing criticism for censoring speech about immigration. Elon Musk has claimed the bill would “make investigating fraud illegal.” One opponent has dubbed it the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” named after the YouTuber known for filming alleged fraud at child care centers in Somali immigrant communities in Minnesota. But its sponsor says the bill simply protects immigrant organizations from threats of violence.

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So which is it?

The bill, AB 2624, does two things. First, it allows people who’ve faced threats or violence for providing or receiving immigration services to join California’s “Safe at Home” program, which allows people to keep their residential address out of state records. Second — and this is the part we’re focusing on — it limits what regular people are allowed to post online about immigrants and the people who help them.

Ban on threats

The bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Mia Bonta, has said her bill has no First Amendment problems and is just about protecting people against threats, violence, and harassment. She’s right that a lot of the bill is actually aimed at speech that’s not protected by the First Amendment: threats and incitement. But some of these sections would benefit from small changes.

For example, one section prohibiting threats seems to ignore Counterman v. Colorado, where the Supreme Court held the government can’t punish someone for making threats unless they knew or at least “consciously disregard[ed] a substantial risk” that the speech “would be viewed as threatening violence.”

Another section criminalizing incitement against immigrants and service providers fails to fully reflect the Supreme Court’s standard for incitement, which requires that the statement in question be intended to cause an imminent illegal action and be likely to do so.

The bill should be amended to explicitly and exactly track the relevant legal standards, but these sections target speech that is not protected by the First Amendment — and, therefore, is within the state’s power to restrict.

Ban on posting “personal information”

The most concerning part of the bill is Section 6218.19.(b)(1), which says people who receive or provide immigration services and are protected by the bill can ban nearly anyone from posting their personal information on the internet — with “personal information” defined as anything that “relates to” them, including simply their name.

In order to face such a ban, the person making the post doesn’t have to be threatening or harassing anyone, and the post doesn’t even have to relate to immigration. The person being posted about simply has to tell them in writing that they fear for their safety “based on” illegal threats or incitement against them online. Once the poster receives the letter, they are prohibited from posting about the person who sent it for four years. If they do, the immigrant or service provider can sue to get a court order requiring removal of the information. If they win, the poster must remove the content and pay court costs and attorney’s fees, which could easily be thousands of dollars.

This section isn’t limited to content that falls outside the First Amendment. Far from it. It covers any information that “relates to” the immigrant or service provider. That means the provision could facilitate censorship of all kinds of speech the Constitution protects. And there is a significant potential pool of people who could seek protection under the bill: over a quarter of California’s population, 10 million people, are immigrants, and likely millions more people have provided them services: lawyers, nonprofit employees, social workers, doctors and other health care providers, etc. A legislative analysis from the Public Safety committee says a person has to have joined the “Safe at Home” program to avail themselves of this section, but the bill text is not entirely clear on that point. It says the person must be “subject to the protection of [the bill],” and most of the bill protects people from threats regardless of whether they’ve actually joined the program. But either way, the First Amendment problems are unchanged.

A few hypotheticals illustrate how the bill’s censorship could work:

• The managing partner of an immigration law firm who receives a threat could argue online comments about the firm “relates to” him or her, and send letters forcing removal of negative reviews of the firm.

• If an elected lawmaker or other high-ranking government official volunteers at an immigration organization and receives an online threat (as such figures often do), they could claim the right to censor people who go online to criticize their government service.

• Someone who gets help from an immigration lawyer and faces an online threat could demand that people take down unrelated social media gossip about them or group pictures on Instagram that include their face.

How does this affect journalism?

According to AB 2624’s critics, this section would censor journalism about immigration services fraud. But Bonta has said, “There are no provisions related to journalism or fraud.”

Neither claim is entirely correct. The bill includes a carve-out for journalists, but it could still be used to censor newsworthy information about immigration organizations.

The exception for journalists says the ban on posting “personal information” doesn’t apply to anyone covered under the state’s press shield law. That includes reporters or anyone else “connected with” a newspaper or other “periodical publication,” or a radio or TV station. In other words, anyone associated with a mainstream media outlet should be able to post without restriction.

For other kinds of reporters, it’s less clear. According to a report by the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, a California Court of Appeal has interpreted the shield law to at least cover bloggers, but that decision doesn’t appear to cover people who don’t post on a recurring basis. If someone captures a newsworthy video and just makes a one-off post about it, it looks like the bill would allow its censorship (assuming satisfaction of the other conditions described above).

It’s also not clear the journalism carve-out protects others who share the same information. For example, what if a journalist posts information censorable under the bill but for the journalism exception, then another person who’s not covered by the shield law incorporates the information into their own post (not simply sharing it, but creating their own new content with it)?

Making the example concrete, in the hypothetical above about the head of an immigration law firm, a journalist could post a story about the person defrauding their clients, but if someone else who isn’t a journalist mentioned the fraud in their own post, the journalist carve-out may not protect it.

What can California do instead?

While the government cannot broadly censor protected speech about victims of threats or harassment, there is plenty California can do to actually protect immigrants and those who provide services to them. Under current California law, threats and harassment are already illegal, and AB 2624 adds further civil and criminal liability for people who commit those offenses against individuals who provide or receive immigration services. Current law also enables victims of harassment to obtain court orders requiring their harasser to stop contacting them. When appropriately scoped (which is not always the case), such orders allow the state to target threats of violence without restricting protected speech.

Imagine you’re a professor who disagrees with your university’s indigenous land acknowledgement, so you write your own as a joke — and then your school investigates you for “unacceptable” and “inappropriate” speech. Or imagine you invite a controversial former Black Panther to speak on campus, so your university forces the event online.

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These are real stories, and FIRE’s archives are full of plenty more just like them. But thanks to a new measure passed in Tennessee, the university’s actions in cases like these wouldn’t just violate the First Amendment, but state law, too. The amended version of Senate Bill 1741, the “Charlie Kirk Act,” builds on the state’s existing campus free speech law to give public university students and faculty some of the most robust speech protections in the nation. FIRE provided feedback on the initial public draft and gave supportive testimony after it was amended to its current language. It now heads to the governor’s desk.

This measure has sparked controversy in part because of provisions in the initial draft that have since been amended, and in part because it’s named for Charlie Kirk, who was tragically assassinated last year. But what matters most is what the final bill as passed does, not what it’s named or what earlier drafts looked like. Let’s address some misconceptions about the Charlie Kirk Act and show why it’s a real win for both students and faculty.

Institutional commitments

The Charlie Kirk Act — introduced by Rep. Gino Bulso and Sen. Paul Rose — requires public universities to adopt two excellent free speech reports from the University of Chicago.

The first is the Chicago Statement, the gold standard for statements of commitment to free speech, which reaffirms the university’s “fundamental commitment” to the principle that debate must not be suppressed simply because others object.

The second is the Kalven Report, which plainly states the principle of institutional neutrality: “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” Universities that fail to remain neutral on the issues of the day prompt self-censorship by students and faculty who disagree with the institution’s official views and fear disciplinary action for dissenting from them.

If Tennessee’s state universities implement this properly — as a restraint on the institution itself and not as a restraint on students or faculty, as we’ve seen elsewhere — this will further bolster the free flow of ideas on campus.

Academic freedom and faculty speech protections

The bill’s most significant contribution may be its provision on academic freedom. The bill says:

A public institution of higher education or a faculty member or agent of the institution shall not retaliate in any way or discriminate in any manner against a faculty member on account of the viewpoints expressed in the faculty member’s scholarly work, or on account of any speech or writing protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Over the years, FIRE has seen countless professors investigated, disciplined, or terminated — from the left and the right — for teaching controversial materials in class or sharing their views on matters of public concern. This bill addresses these unconstitutional and speech-chilling actions by prohibiting all forms of viewpoint-discriminatory retaliation against faculty for their protected speech.

Building on existing law

Other provisions of the Charlie Kirk Act supplement or clarify Tennessee’s existing campus free speech law.

Current law says public colleges cannot disinvite a speaker invited by a student, student organization, or faculty member because others find their speech offensive or disagreeable. But universities often attempt to justify disinvitations by citing potential disruptive activities, rather than the speaker’s viewpoint. This is hardly better, as it incentivizes would-be censors to threaten disruption so that their school has an excuse to shut down the speech in question (often referred to as the “heckler’s veto”). This bill clarifies that the disinvitation prohibition extends to “threatened protests or opposition.”

It also prohibits public colleges from retaliating against individuals or denying recognition to student groups for their religious views or “position concerning abortion, homosexuality, or transgender behavior.” The First Amendment and existing state law already prohibit such retaliation, regardless of whether the speech in question concerns one of the issues above, but Bulso said he wanted to highlight these particular issues given the “fierce opposition” Kirk himself often faced when speaking on them.

And importantly, this provision was amended from its original language, which would only have protected those speaking in “opposition to” those subjects. In the final version, people on all sides of these topics receive the same treatment.

Finally, the Charlie Kirk Act clarifies what it means to “substantially obstruct or otherwise substantially interfere with the freedom of others” to express their views, which is prohibited by Tennessee’s campus free speech law. This phrase is aimed at shoutdowns, a form of mob censorship where a group engages in disruptive behavior to make it impossible for an audience to hear an invited speaker’s message.

The bill defines this language to include intentionally drowning out an invited speaker, blocking the view of an invited speaker, or physically obstructing people from attending an event. It also prohibits walkouts in the middle of an invited speaker’s remarks, but only where the walkout is intentionally, materially, and substantially disruptive to the event. The original language — erroneously quoted in some media outlets — lacked these important qualifiers.

This language protects speakers and counterprotestors alike: Students who want to hear an invited speaker will be able to do so, while protesters are free to respond in nondisruptive ways. At the same time, schools must be sure to apply this provision only to speaker events in reserved areas, not to lawful counterprotests in the generally accessible, open, outdoor areas of campus. Those areas remain traditional public forums for student expression.

The amended version also dropped both the mandatory discipline section and the private civil enforcement section, including an exception to Tennessee’s anti-SLAPP law.

Conclusion

The Charlie Kirk Act will allow members of the campus community to speak with renewed confidence. Professors can contest university positions with more protection against retaliation. Students and faculty can invite speakers without worrying that the school will shut them down because others protest.

Bottom line: that’s a significant win for free expression at Tennessee’s public universities.

“This decline did not come out of nowhere, nor did it happen overnight. And we were certainly more than mere bystanders. We must acknowledge how we have fallen short . . . I accept without reservation the committee’s recommendations to protect free speech and support academic freedom . . . We must ensure that Yale is a place where people are free to take intellectual risks, including the risk to disagree and be disagreed with.”

—Maurie McInnis, president of Yale University, responding to a recent school report showing the erosion of public trust in higher education, April 15, 2026.

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You don’t need to live in China to experience China’s censorship

The UK’s Victoria and Albert Museum quietly altered its own exhibition catalogues — removing maps and an image of Vladimir Lenin — to satisfy Chinese Communist Party censors tied to overseas printing. But as explains in a chilling post, this is just one canary in a very large coal mine:

Perhaps worst of all, this influence is operating in higher education on a global scale, introducing both overt and subtle limits on universities and the people who study and teach within them. In the short term, researchers and student dissidents suffer threats and censorship. In the long run, the education, research, and discussion that the entire world relies on for knowledge generation is throttled . . . You may be thousands of miles away from the Chinese government, but its censorship is operating much closer than you think.

UNC Chapel Hill drops probe into satire

UNC Chapel Hill dropped its investigation into a satirical comedy sketch mocking performative “white liberal” attitudes. As Marie McMullan explains:

Naturally, critics are free to answer The Daily Tar Heel and Hill After Hours with more speech. They can comment on the article or videos online. Or they can make their own content in response, as some students already have. But the school itself, as a public research university, is not free to answer such speech with actions designed to chill student expression.

Below the fold

• French lawmakers withdrew a bill yesterday that would have implemented sweeping antisemitism restrictions, including banning the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

• An Alabama woman was found not guilty on all charges after attending a No Kings parade to protest the Trump administration dressed as a giant penis.

Terms of service

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the world’s primary engines of knowledge creation. And as this meaning-making system comes online, so too does the inevitable desire for government control. The following discussion from Jan. 22, “Regulating AI: Who decides?,” brings together the individuals tracking and resisting that expansion. Dean Ball — technologist, AI governance analyst, and former White House science and technology adviser — warns that “responsible AI” rhetoric often serves as an on-ramp to permanent regulatory control. Ari Cohn, First Amendment attorney and tech policy expert, brings a free speech lawyer’s clarity to where government proposals cross constitutional lines. Matt Perault, head of AI policy at Andreessen Horowitz, examines how regulatory choices shape the incentives that drive innovation. And guiding the discussion is Kmele Foster of The Fifth Column podcast, whose work is defined by a first-principles approach and an inimitable commitment to curiosity.

This week in history

On April 11, 1938, Life magazine sparked widespread controversy after publishing “The Birth of a Baby,” a photo essay depicting childbirth. The images were based on a film already banned in several cities for “indecency,” yet Life proceeded after consulting officials and warning readers in advance. Authorities in multiple jurisdictions — including parts of New Jersey as well as Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, and the state of Pennsylvania — moved to restrict or block distribution. Despite these efforts, public opinion leaned strongly against censorship, with a Gallup poll finding 76% opposed to the bans. On April 26, the Bronx Court of Special Sessions ruled the magazine was not indecent, and publisher Roy Larsen was acquitted. The controversy ultimately boosted Life’s national profile, providing significant publicity just two years after its launch in an early example of the Streisand effect.

By the numbers

Regardless of ideology, Gen Z is vastly more likely to endorse violence against speakers than Boomers. In fact, Gen Z are 9.6 times more accepting of violence against speakers than Baby Boomers and over 25 times more accepting of violence against speakers than the Silent generation.

Texas Tech has two months to shut down its sex and gender courses after the university system passed sweeping new guidance. This marks an escalation from previous restrictions on topics related to race, gender, and sex. It also comes amid a spate of course cancellations and changes across Texas right now. For faculty, the message is loud and clear: the Texas Tech University System does not want you to teach about sex or gender. And if you do, you’d better be careful.

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The guidance, issued on April 9, establishes a “strict prohibition” on all academic programs “centered on” sex and gender and creates a “strict prohibition” on such content in core and lower-level undergraduate courses. It also bans “instruction that advocates for concepts of inherent racial or sexual superiority, inherent bias, or collective guilt.”

Banning classes in whole areas of inquiry raises obvious academic freedom concerns. But while one can imagine a college that simply lacks classes “centered on” those topics — many certainly exist — Texas Tech’s guidance goes way past simply being bad for academic freedom and straight to being unworkable at any college or university dedicated to a liberal education.

Texas Tech’s guidance prohibits instructors from teaching that gender identity is fluid, that there are more than two genders, or that gender is distinct from biological sex. (Sorry, Plato!) In core undergraduate courses, “incidental references” to sex and gender content are to be avoided when discussing primary materials for core courses. If course material does include such content? Instructors “must not highlight, assess, or allocate instructional time to it” — with no exceptions.

Forget walking on eggshells. Faculty now need to walk across the verbal equivalent of broken glass if they dare include material that could conceivably violate these rules. If a student asks a question that mentions sex or gender? Be sure not to “assess” the question!

The guidance does make exceptions for upper-level courses, but they are not much better. Analysis of “primary works” is permitted only if it is “strictly objective” and “lacks advocacy for contemporary matters.” If any discussion of sex or gender is linked to a historical figure or event, faculty may teach about that event or figure, but must not include “contemporary . . . advocacy.” Good luck sorting all of that out, faculty members.

Restricting topics on race and sex

The guidance then doubles down on previous system guidance that prohibited faculty from teaching “as absolute truth” certain concepts:

• One race or sex is inherently superior to another;

• An individual, by virtue of race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, consciously or unconsciously;

• Any person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of race or sex;

• Moral character or worth is determined by race or sex;

• Individuals bear responsibility or guilt for actions of others of the same race or sex; or

• Meritocracy or a strong work ethic are inherently racist, sexist, or constructs of oppression.

If these are presented in a course, then they are required to be presented alongside other perspectives. The university system previously singled out those ideas in a December memo establishing faculty should not “promote or otherwise inculcate” those views in the classroom, indicating that faculty who wish to express the opposing views — the state-sanctioned view — would be just fine. Regardless of what one thinks of these beliefs, prohibiting specific ideas in the classroom under such broad language is clear viewpoint discrimination, or “censorship in its purest form.”

And last but not least, the system will create standardized syllabus templates, and will require faculty “to clearly disclose all covered topics in their syllabi and faithfully adhere only to those stated concepts.” That’s not a good sign for a state that has already seen other public university systems mandate changes to hundreds of syllabi to remove objectionable course content. In this charged political atmosphere, a requirement that faculty “faithfully adhere” to syllabi content does not allow for the necessary breathing room for faculty to occasionally go off-topic or bring in current events to class discussions. Rather, it sets a conveniently movable tripwire that can be used to go after any faculty member for stray classroom remarks.

Texas cracks down on the First Amendment

The system’s crackdown is the latest in a series of course cancellations, course material changes, and faculty punishments in the state. First, we saw Texas Tech University cancel a course under the guise of reviewing faculty teaching materials. Then Texas A&M University cancelled six courses and modified hundreds of others as part of a sweeping system review of how courses discussed race and gender in class. Texas State University is being sued by two separate professors who were fired for off-the-clock speech.

Texas Tech system chancellor Brandon Creighton said that these changes are necessary to ensure that students are ready for the workforce. But against the backdrop of larger efforts to root out certain ideas from the classroom, it seems that the TTU system is going directly for academic freedom’s jugular by targeting specific, disfavored ideas. Students currently enrolled in these sex and gender majors and minors will be able to finish out their studies. And universities have until June 15 to identify what programs, majors, minors, and other certificates qualify for this directive. After that, certain ideas will be officially verboten in Texas university classrooms.

So that’s not great.

In our National Speech Index, FIRE asks the general public a variety of questions related to free speech, including: How acceptable is it to use physical violence to stop someone giving a speech in their community? Gen Z are 9.6 times more accepting of violence against speakers than Baby Boomers1, and over 25 times more accepting of violence against speakers than the Silent Generation2. Each successive generation is more supportive of violence against speakers than the last, in most cases more than twice as supportive. About 43% of Gen Z say violence against speakers is at least rarely acceptable, and over a quarter say it’s sometimes or always acceptable3.

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I consider this an illegitimate (and ineffective) response to legitimate grievances. Whether one believes that there’s a lot wrong with our country or leadership; that Gen Z has gotten a raw deal economically; or even that our politics are completely broken — that break is in part because we have lost the ability to sit down and talk our problems out. Hurting or killing speakers doesn’t fix political issues. It doesn’t do anything about the problems driving the grievances people have. It just foments chaos and creates a new problem to fix.

But is this support for violence more a liberal problem? Young people tend to be more liberal, so maybe that’s the real source of the effect. To check, let’s separate the age groups by ideology:

Nope4.

Regardless of ideology, Gen Z is vastly more likely to endorse violence against speakers than Boomers, with that effect being strongest among the “very conservative.” This is primarily a generational divide, and the impact of ideology is a distant second. But the intersection of age and ideology does produce some very interesting effects. When we ask, for instance, about whether offensive speakers should face consequences, we see the opposite effect for old and young liberals:

Heck of a fall.

Compared to any other ideology, young and middle-aged liberals show more support for punishing offensive speakers. When it comes to older people, the opposite is true. In our data, young liberals are the most censorious group while old liberals are the least censorious5. One explanation is simply that we are seeing a semantic shift whereby for many measures, “liberal” has come to represent the opposite of what it once did. Think “woke” vs. old-school Progressives and Classical Liberals.

For those who care about free speech and a culture of open discourse, this should warrant serious attention. I don’t have a silver bullet here. I don’t think there is one. But when this many people start to say they are willing to resort to such a desperate solution, we have to confront the problem before the problem confronts us.

The code, data, and codebook used to generate these plots can be found here.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the world’s primary engines of knowledge creation. And as this meaning-making system comes online, so too does the inevitable desire for government control. How the First Amendment and other legal principles apply to AI will determine whether the future operating system for the planet acts as a tool for inquiry and expansion of human knowledge and capacity — or for compliance and top-down control. History is blunt on this point: once government acquires durable power over speech and expression, that power only ever expands — and the lure of censorship becomes virtually impossible to resist.

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This discussion — from Jan. 22, 2026 — brings together the individuals tracking and resisting that expansion. Dean Ball — technologist, AI governance analyst, and former White House science and technology adviser — warns that “responsible AI” rhetoric often serves as an on-ramp to permanent regulatory control. Ari Cohn, First Amendment attorney and tech policy expert, brings a free speech lawyer’s clarity to where government proposals cross constitutional lines. Matt Perault, head of AI policy at Andreessen Horowitz, examines how regulatory choices shape the incentives that drive innovation. And guiding the discussion is Kmele Foster of The Fifth Column podcast, whose work is defined by a first-principles approach and an inimitable commitment to curiosity.

Panelists:

• Dean W. Ball (X), senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, former senior AI policy advisor at the White House OSTP, and principal staff drafter of “America’s AI Action Plan”

• Matt Perault (X), AI policy head at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and former director of the Center on Technology Policy at University of UNC Chapel Hill. Read a16z’s AI policy work on Substack

• Ari Cohn (X), a nationally recognized attorney and expert on the First Amendment, defamation, and Section 230

• Kmele Foster (X), editor-at-large at Tangle News and partner at Big Think

You’re most likely reading this article from a country that is not China. So, naturally, you might think that China’s censorship laws have nothing to do with you. Not so fast. The interconnectedness of global commerce has created crevices for authoritarian censorship to seep in, and the latest news out of the Victoria and Albert Museum offers a perfect illustration of how it unfolds.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum, the United Kingdom’s famed art institution, joins the growing list of institutions that have consented to censorship rules imposed by the Chinese government in order to print goods more affordably in the country. Documents obtained by The Guardian reveal that the museum consented to changes in the catalogue for its new Music is Black exhibition after C&C Offset Printing, its printing partner in China, said a map in the document was flagged by censorship body the General Administration of Press and Publication.

“There is a map on p10 relates to China (there is China border here and we need to use the standard maps from Chinese Government) and GAPP rejected it,” the printer wrote in an email to the V&A. “Our suggestion is to delete this map or use another image.”

An internal email to V&A East director Gus Casely-Hayford complained, “We were aware of sensitivity around contemporary maps but it now clearly applies to historic maps too.” Ultimately, the museum chose to substitute in a different photograph and print the censored version. And this wasn’t the only time they’ve done so. The museum also consented to cut another map from the Fabergé: Romance to Revolution exhibit catalogue as well as a photo of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin would be too “sensitive” for China’s censorship body, the printers warned.

The V&A defended its decision making process, arguing that it only consents to what it sees as superficial edits. “We sometimes print in China, but maintain close editorial oversight,” the museum said in a statement. “We were comfortable making minor edits, as they did not affect the narrative and we would obviously pull production if we felt any requested change was problematic.”

In isolation, such changes may appear to some as minor or unimportant. But in the aggregate, they add up — and influence in perpetuity how the entire world reads, experiences, and understands material pertaining to China and content it deems politically sensitive. It isn’t just one museum. It’s also book publishers, AI companies, movie studios, hotel chains, fashion houses, and gaming giants. And that’s not to mention the threats made to critics of the Chinese government in countries all around the world, including the United States. Doesn’t seem so minor, does it?

Perhaps worst of all, this influence is operating in higher education on a global scale, introducing both overt and subtle limits on universities and the people who study and teach within them. In the short term, researchers and student dissidents suffer threats and censorship. In the long run, the education, research, and discussion that the entire world relies on for knowledge generation is throttled. I covered this oppressive trend in my book released last year, Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.

You may be thousands of miles away from the Chinese government, but its censorship is operating much closer than you think.

FIRE’s Free Speech Dispatch covers new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.

Editor’s note: Sarah McLaughlin is going on sabbatical soon, so there may be a bit of a break between future entries. But regularly scheduled content will resume in late June. Stay tuned.

France considers new antisemitism bill

A bill with broad support brought by MP Caroline Yadan is set for debate soon in French Parliament, and it would introduce a broad range of new speech offenses under French criminal law. The bill seeks to expand the existing terror offenses of incitement to terrorism and glorification of terrorism to criminalize “implicit,” rather than just direct, incitement of terror as well as glorification of the perpetrators of terrorist acts.

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It would also punish speech calling for the “destruction of a state recognised by the French Republic” with a €45,000 ($53,080) fine and up to five years in prison. “From the river to the sea” is one of the phrases that would be considered advocacy for the destruction of a recognized country. “It’s not specifically about Israel,” Yadan said about the legislation. “But obviously, today, there is only one country in the world whose criticism takes the form of calls for its destruction, and that’s Israel.” Earlier versions of the bill included language banning comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, but those provisions have since been removed.

France is not the only country to consider banning “from the river to the sea” and similar phrases. The Australian state of Queensland recently banned the slogan, and arrests under the new law have begun. A 70-year-old activist arrested for displaying the slogan at a protest appeared in court this week under the new hate speech laws — and is “pleading insanity.”

“Not that I think I’m insane,” he said. “I think the law is insane.”

Irish media minister targets ‘lopsided’ media

Irish media Minister Patrick O’Donovan said he wants media regulator Coimisiún na Meán to look into the “lopsided” media coverage of recent fuel protests in the country, as well as why he received fewer invites to speak than other officials and commentators. He also objected to comments in the media calling the government’s tone about the protests “lecturing and hectoring.” The National Union of Journalists called O’Donovan’s warnings “sinister and deeply disturbing.”

“One of the things I will be looking at as Minister for Communications is to see if you have a panel discussion, for instance, on a national broadcaster, where there’s three or four from the opposition and one from the government, is that a legitimate debate?,” O’Donovan said. He further added that “in a democracy, all voices should be heard, not just some” — and apparently it’s the role of a government regulator to decide which voices should be heard, and how frequently.

More speech news out of Europe

• France is considering joining the growing list of countries banning social media access for children under 15, with officials arguing the move is necessary to protect young users.

• In Germany, a 67-year-old woman was fined €800 for insulting politician Markus Söder on a sign held during a 2023 protest, but has been acquitted on appeal.

• UK police arrested protesters near a Royal Air Force base used by U.S. forces. Authorities said they were detained “on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organisation” during a demonstration.

Australia’s teen social media ban isn’t working

In Australia, debates over online access and the country’s landmark age-gating legislation continue. Proponents of these laws have argued they are absolutely necessary to protect kids online and the associated risks to privacy and free speech are a price we must be willing to pay. But…what if the laws aren’t even doing what they promise? A new eSafety report finds that among parents with kids on social media before Dec. 10, 2025, about seven in 10 said their child still had an account on Facebook (63.6%), Instagram (69.1%), Snapchat (69.4%), and TikTok (69.3%).

Brazil’s aggressive antiracism laws ensnare tourist

A case in Brazil has drawn international attention after an Argentine tourist was charged with “imitating a monkey and uttering a racist slur” after getting into a dispute with waiters over her bill at a Rio de Janeiro bar. Agostina Páez has since apologized but could face up to two years in prison if convicted. Until recently, Páez was kept under watch by Brazilian authorities and required to wear an ankle monitor, but she was eventually permitted to pay a $20,000 bail and return to Argentina until a judge rules in her case. “Brazil is being painted as this authoritarian country,” prosecutor Fabíola Tardin told The New York Times, “when we are only seeking justice for the harm done.”

Journalists and writers face intimidation, arrest, and imprisonment

• Malaysia convicted blogger Papagomo of sedition for a social media post deemed to have “incit[ed] hatred against the King,” sentencing him to a RM 4,000 fine or jail time. The court ruled the defense had “failed to raise a reasonable doubt,” reinforcing how speech involving the monarchy remains tightly controlled.

• In Iraq, American journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen but has fortunately since been freed.

• Egypt arrested political commentator Ahmed Douma over an article and social media posts. Authorities accused him of spreading “false news and rumors…that would disturb public order,” a charge often used in cases involving dissent.

• Kuwaiti authorities arrested American-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin on charges of “spreading false information, harming national security, and misuse of a mobile phone. Some of the charges reportedly relate to “footage of a US F-15 fighter jet crash near a base in Kuwait during a reported friendly fire incident earlier in March.” Such arrests have been common lately in the Middle East amid war with Iran. In the UAE, authorities arrested 375 people for filming incidents and sharing what officials described as “misleading information.”

Russia tightens internet restrictions as VPN access disappears

Russia is expanding its control over online speech, blocking hundreds of VPN services that once allowed users to bypass censorship and access independent information. Authorities say the restrictions are necessary to combat “illegal content” and protect national security, and more than 400 VPNs have already been affected, cutting off one of the last major workarounds to government controls.

The changes are part of a broader effort to reshape the country’s digital infrastructure. Analysts describe the shift as the construction of a “digital iron curtain,” with users pushed toward state-approved platforms and away from global networks. In some areas, disruptions have become so severe that people are turning to landline phones as internet access becomes less reliable.

Russia has also designated Tufts University and its Fletcher School as “undesirable organizations,” effectively banning collaboration and exposing affiliates to legal risk. Officials accused the institutions of acting as “instruments of anti-Russian propaganda” and attempting to “undermine public trust.”

Expanding limits on media, culture, and the internet

• In Canada, proposed changes to Ontario’s freedom of information system have sparked pushback from transparency advocates. They argue the reforms could lead to a more “secretive government,” limiting the public’s ability to access records and scrutinize decision-making.

• India is, yet again, expanding its regulation of online expression. Proposed rules reclassify influencers as publishers, putting them under the same oversight as traditional media outlets, a move critics say could “tighten control over online news.”

• Belarus has introduced a sweeping law banning so-called “propaganda” of same-sex relationships, “gender reassignment,” and “childlessness.” The law defines propaganda broadly as information meant to “influence citizens’ perceptions,” with Human Rights Watch saying it reflects a broader effort to “control public discourse, and suppress dissent.”

Blasphemy prosecutions in Nigeria carry death sentences

A Sharia court in Kano sentenced an Islamic cleric to death for blasphemy after determining his remarks insulted the Prophet Muhammad. In a separate case, a Christian father may also face execution after being accused of possessing “blasphemous material,” which he denies.

As is the case in Pakistan, rights advocates have accused these brutal blasphemy laws of being used as a tool to settle disputes among individuals — the fallout from an accusation alone can be so destructive that alleging blasphemy can be enough to derail another person’s life.

Alison Riddoch is a legal clerk for Campus Rights Advocacy at FIRE and a student at Duke Law School, class of 2027.

“There’s much misinformation about this care,” says Shelley Sella, a longtime provider of third-trimester abortions. “It’s shrouded in secrecy and, because of that, it’s stigmatized.” Sella has made public education part of her mission, which is why Medical Students for Choice invited her to give a talk on third-trimester abortion care at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center this past January. But after a campaign by TTUHSC’s Turning Point USA chapter and off-campus pro-life activists, the school canceled the event, claiming it was “not in the best interest of the university.”

But allowing the event to proceed would have been in the school’s best interests — not only because of its obligation to protect student events under the First Amendment, but also because it should aim to prepare students to respond to challenges they will surely face in their future careers.

Some topics in medicine can be uncomfortable to discuss. But debate and disagreement are signs of conversations worth having, not problems to be avoided. It is only through open discussion that we can meaningfully address questions about ethics, patient care, and medical judgment. When educational institutions censor these conversations, they prevent the very debate necessary for informed decision-making, leaving students less equipped to navigate the ethical and clinical challenges of their chosen fields.

Regardless of one’s views on late-term abortion, the ethical questions it raises are a reality that future medical practitioners must confront. Nine states and the District of Columbia currently have no abortion cutoff period. In many other states, late-term abortions are allowed if the fetus has a fatal condition or if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s health. Medical professionals need to learn as students to be prepared to communicate clearly and compassionately with future patients facing difficult decisions while balancing their own moral beliefs, institutional policies, and legal constraints.

Efforts to censor controversial medical and scientific knowledge are not new. In the late 19th century, the Comstock Act and numerous state laws criminalized distributing information about contraception and reproductive health. Classifying what we now see as basic medical knowledge as “obscene” material, these laws prevented doctors, educators, and ordinary people from making their own informed opinions. These laws also had wide-ranging negative effects on public health and health education, from preventing the sharing of information about how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases to restricting the publication of accurate medical textbooks.

Or consider the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, in which the U.S. government deliberately withheld treatment from 400 black men with syphilis in order to observe the effects of the disease, even to the point of death. It was only through open scrutiny, public discourse, and investigative reporting that the study’s harmful practices were exposed and ultimately ended, leading to sweeping reforms in research ethics.

This stain on American medical history remains an essential topic of discussion precisely because it teaches us that suppressing difficult conversations about medical ethics can allow harm to persist — and that open, honest engagement with even the most uncomfortable chapters in medical history is necessary to prevent their repetition.

Shielding individuals from conversations to prevent potential discomfort sends a powerful but damaging message that it is better to remain silent and uninformed than to engage thoughtfully with difficult questions. But nobody benefits from ignorance, particularly in the medical arena. Reasonable people can and do disagree in good faith about the ethics of specific medical procedures, emerging technologies, and areas of scientific research.

Exposure to and discussion of controversial medical topics allows future professionals to develop their own ethical frameworks, grapple with competing values, and learn from the experiences of those who have gone before. Accordingly, these conversations have direct implications for the future of patient care, public health, and scientific research.

Advances in science and medicine will continue, raising new and difficult ethical questions that future professionals will have to confront. If students are not able to engage in these conversations in classrooms and at campus events, with the guidance of faculty and the benefit of diverse perspectives, how can we expect them to do so competently when real patients, real communities, and real consequences are at stake?

“In light of the First Amendment to our Constitution, the government cannot properly silence the People or the Press simply because the government disagrees with public protests, demonstrations, press reporting, or other speech criticizing the government.”

– Judge Ronald M. Gould on federal immigration officers using crowd-control weapons in Los Angeles Press Club v. Noem.

Trump threatens CNN over Iran reporting

President Trump claimed on Truth Social that CNN’s reporting of a statement in which Iran declared victory in the ongoing war is disinformation, adding, “CNN is being ordered to immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible ‘reporting.’”

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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr also weighed in, calling for “change at CNN.” But as we have explained before, jawboning is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Turkey seeks to end online anonymity

The Turkish government is submitting a proposal to parliament requiring people to ID themselves to use social media. Unregistered accounts will be removed by platforms. As recently explained:

We need the ability to speak anonymously online, whether to criticize our leaders, search for embarrassing medical advice, or even just to ask the age-old question: r/AmItheAsshole? What’s happening in Turkey should signal a clear shot across the bow. We need to fight for this right, or we are going to lose it. Fast.

Below the fold

• President Trump threatened to jail a journalist in efforts to find who leaked reports that a second Air Force officer from a downed U.S. fighter jet in Iran was missing, saying, “We’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security, give it up or go to jail.’ The person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say.”

• A former philosophy professor is suing Texas State University for firing him one year after he gave a speech — in a different state as a private citizen — on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• London’s annual rap and hip-hop Wireless Festival was canceled this week after the British government refused entry to Kanye West over his antisemitic comments in the past.

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill (HB 1471) allowing him to designate foreign and domestic terrorist organizations.

Terms of service

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called on ministers to take stronger action against social media companies that spread disinformation, calling it “the outrage economy,” after a study showed a surge in the number of people talking about the city’s crime rate, often in relation to immigration. Khan even called for the formation of a new watchdog group. “We need a new central body with the agility and authority to protect our democracy from disinformation,” he said, “and deal with the scale and speed of this crisis. And we need more aggressive enforcement of the rules we already have.”

This week in history

On April 8, 1999, FIRE was founded by UPenn professor Alan Charles Kors and Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. After publishing their book, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses, they received hundreds of pleas from college students and faculty who had been harmed by illiberal policies and double standards.

FIRE originally focused our work on college campuses before expanding in 2022 to defend free expression generally. We also changed our name to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Today, FIRE defends free speech not just on campus but across American culture, taking on threats to civil liberties wherever they arise.

Where there’s smoke

In this new FIREwire section, we’ll be covering the ongoing cases we’ve got our eyes on and the ones we think you should be watching too.

UNC Chapel Hill students celebrated April Fools’ Day by creating satirical content, including one video mocking performative liberal attitudes, then the university condemned the material and launched an investigation. But student satire is protected under the First Amendment, as recently explained.

By the numbers

People who agree with the claim “words can be violence” are generally more likely to support censorship. But how widely held is this idea, and who holds it? It turns out, this belief is not just a disproportionately liberal opinion but also a disproportionately female one. In fact, even very conservative women are more likely to think “words can be violence” than very liberal men.

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Our data on the general population is less comprehensive than our student data. We don’t ask the same speaker-tolerance questions. But we do ask people whether they agree with the claim, “Words can be violence.” It seems likely that people who think words are violence are more likely to support censorship. The phrase is also a slogan among left-wing activists. But how widely held is this idea, and who holds it?

To figure that out, consider the scatterplot below, showing men on the left and women on the right. Each marker indicates a different political ideology, such as “conservative” or “very liberal.” The lower down each marker sits in a column, the more that group agrees with the claim, “Words can be violence.” The first thing to notice is that liberals, men and women alike, are more likely than conservatives to think words can be violence. That’s not too surprising. But take another look.

It turns out, this belief is not just a disproportionately liberal opinion — it’s also a disproportionately female one. In fact, even very conservative women are more likely to think “words can be violence” than very liberal men. Also, it seems the gender gap here is growing compared to last year, though there’s enough noise that it’s very uncertain.

Notably, the size of the gender gap varies significantly depending on what sort of question you ask, including in some ways that I wouldn’t have guessed. When we ask people whether offensive speakers should face consequences, we see a much smaller gender gap.

If I had to hazard a guess at why men and women are more in agreement here, I’d assume it’s because unlike with most of our questions, or public framings for that matter, there’s more emphasis here on how censorship can harm people. All you champions of free speech, take note. It might be that emphasizing the harm of censorship is a more effective way to get women engaged in the issue.

As one might expect, the gap reemerges when we look at aggression and ask whether Americans should have the right to curse at politicians.

Men are more okay with cursing at politicians than women, by and large. Very liberal women are also okay with it. Unsurprisingly, conservative women are not fans of profanity. But very conservative men are.

It’s striking to see how often speech issues don’t divide along simple political lines. Support for free speech isn’t a simple story about whether people agree with opinions or not. Oftentimes, it’s more influenced by social factors including gender, or driven by personality traits such as disagreeableness, or even more bizarre factors.

This essay was originally published by The News & Observer on April 10, 2026.

“Hey guys, welcome back to my channel,” says the young blonde host as she stands on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. “Today I’m going to be taking a step outside of Granville and exploring a third-world country — South Campus.”

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What follows is a satire of the genre of performative allyship that some refer to as “white lady liberalism.” Our host continues, “Now I know what you guys are thinking. Stacy, isn’t that, like, super dangerous? The truth is, the people here are just like us. And I’m here to prove it. I just can’t wait to bask in their culture and in their struggle. The truth is, we have nothing to be afraid of.” But just to be safe, she adds, she is taking along two bodyguards, pepper spray, and a taser (as well as her vape).

At this point in the video, the joke could go one of two ways. This could end up being a satire of people who are foolish enough to go slumming, who think we have nothing to be afraid of, or a satire of people with such racist hyper-sensitivities that they feel the need to carry mace to visit the other half of their public Ivy campus. The joke ends up going in the second direction.

When they get to South Campus, the theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly plays in the background as if Stacy has been wandering across a desert wasteland for days. She pauses, and says she’s surprised to see South Campus has roads and buildings. One of her bodyguards notices a nearby building is missing a brick and warns Stacy to watch out for sepsis. The sketch is dripping with mockery for the soft bigotry of exoticizing ordinary places, such as by treating a section of campus as if it’s rural Chad, and the over-the-top pearl-clutching of this well-intentioned white girl whose bodyguards gasp at masonry defects.

In the next scene, a black female student recognizes Stacy and runs up to give her a hug. But Stacy recoils and pretends not to know the girl. She’s a racist Regina George from Mean Girls, warm and performative but image-obsessed and disavowing in public. In the next scene, Stacy continues the tour — “This is where they play their games, such as basketball and futbol” — and introduces herself to a young Latino boy who is in the middle of a pickup game. “Hi, my name’s Stacy. Staaacy. Me, Staaacy.” The boy catches the basketball, looks at her like she’s a moron, and shakes his head. The joke is, unmistakably, at her expense.

On April 1, The Daily Tar Heel ran several satirical headlines — “The Daily Woke Heel,” “Trump orders ALE in Chapel Hill to be replaced with ICE agents,” and “UNC brings back DEI — for whites.” Then on Monday, the student-run late-night variety show Hill After Hours released the South Campus sketch from its March 31 episode on TikTok. One black student filmed a response to the headlines and the sketch, noting that South Campus historically housed black students and calling the sketch racist. The editors of The Daily Tar Heel issued an apology and removed headlines. Things took an even darker turn when UNC Chapel Hill publicly condemned the articles and the video.

“Recent content of both a racist and insensitive nature has had a profound impact on our Carolina students and their families,” wrote Senior Vice Provost James Orr. “Any content that demeans, harms, or contributes to an unwelcoming environment in our campus community is unacceptable.” But these remarks seemingly ignore UNC Chapel Hill’s own free expression policies, state law obligations, and the First Amendment to the Constitution.

To be fair, Orr did recognize that his office has no authority over The Daily Tar Heel, saying the newspaper “operates as a nonprofit organization legally and financially independent of the university.” Still, he called the satirical articles “highly inappropriate and offensive” and said, “we unequivocally condemn them.” That didn’t stop the chill from hitting the newsroom. After the condemnation, The Daily Tar Heel announced it was adding a news adviser, seeking DEI training, and shelving satire for the rest of the semester.

As for Hill After Hours, Orr said, “Student Affairs is investigating this incident to determine more information about how and by whom the video was authorized and produced as well as next steps to address concerns.”

Investigating a student group or condemning speech is not the role of a public university. Students and student journalists do not lose their First Amendment rights just because their speech is offensive, unpopular, or badly received. The Supreme Court has made that clear: In Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, the Court held that a political cartoon in a student paper depicting police officers raping the Statue of Liberty and Goddess of Justice was protected speech. “The mere dissemination of ideas” on campus, the Court explained, however “offensive” to others, “may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’”

But that’s exactly what UNC Chapel Hill is doing. Satire that others find offensive will continue to be shut off in the name of “decency” if the university doesn’t change course.

Constitutional law isn’t the university’s only concern. North Carolina state law requires the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina to “remain neutral, as an institution, on the political controversies of the day.” This law enshrines a standard of institutional neutrality for UNC institutions. Institutional neutrality, as best described by the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, means that a university “is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” This creates space for individual and collective voices to flourish rather than chilling voices of opposition, much less humor.

This law also limits how UNC system schools can restrict student expression, specifically stating “constituent institutions shall be allowed to restrict student expression only for expressive activity not protected by the First Amendment.” Both The Daily Tar Heel‘s and Hill After Hours’ speech is protected — so UNC Chapel cannot restrict their expression, plain and simple.

Naturally, critics are free to answer The Daily Tar Heel and Hill After Hours with more speech. They can comment on the article or videos online. Or they can make their own content in response, as some students already have. But the school itself, as a public research university, is not free to answer such speech with actions designed to chill student expression.

In June 2024, the philosopher Idris Robinson traveled from Texas to North Carolina to give a talk on Palestinian resistance. Nearly a year later, Texas State University fired him for it. Then when historian Thomas Alter spoke at an online socialist conference, the school fired him too, reinstated him, and fired him again. Now in separate First Amendment lawsuits, the two professors are taking Texas State to court.

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Robinson delivered his 2024 talk, “Strategic Lessons on the Palestinian Resistance,” at the Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB) in Asheville, North Carolina. During his talk, Robinson described “terrorism murder” as “divine violence” and praised the October 7 attacks on Israel. When the audience noticed three people livestreaming the event, two of them Jewish, the crowd attacked them and kicked them out. Robinson was giving his talk when the fight broke out but whether he told the crowd to stop, said nothing and just watched, or made jokes as the situation unfolded, his speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Local police investigated and three attendees later pleaded guilty to assault. But the police investigation did not name Robinson as a suspect or even a witness.

Nearly a year later, one of the three victims’ livestream appeared on Instagram. Texas State put Robinson on administrative leave shortly afterwards, saying it had received “multiple complaints and allegations regarding an incident that occurred in the summer of 2024.” One month after that, they told him his contract would not be renewed.

Now, represented by First Amendment attorney Samantha Harris of the law firm Allen Harris, Robinson has filed suit against Texas State University, alleging a violation of his constitutional free-speech rights. JT Morris, a supervising senior attorney at FIRE, is serving as local counsel. The lawsuit’s argument is simple: Robinson consistently received positive reviews and was on track for tenure. But after sharing his views off campus and as a private citizen, Texas State pushed him out over a social media pile-on.

Under the law, state universities don’t get to punish faculty simply for saying things that make people uncomfortable, or for attracting negative attention to the school. Universities, especially large public institutions like Texas State University, should encourage the robust discussion of public issues, even if they offend those off campus. To begin with, public schools are funded by taxpayers and therefore function as state actors. If a public school silences a professor, that’s government censorship and a direct violation of the First Amendment. But a university also exists to pursue truth. Indeed, “Truth” is one of the four words in Texas State University’s own motto. Pursuing truth wherever it leads means one must tolerate different perspectives. As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, even wildly incorrect views and opinions are critical to that process for one unavoidable reason: if you never examine alternative views, you have no way of knowing whether your own views are actually correct.

Robinson’s lawsuit comes on the heels of fellow faculty member Thomas Alter’s lawsuit against Texas State, which was filed last September. As mentioned above, Alter was fired (then reinstated, then fired again) after a video of him speaking at an online socialist conference went viral. In his talk, Alter said workers must organize so they are ready to “take power” when the revolution comes. “Without organization,” he asked, “how can anyone expect to overthrow the most bloodthirsty, profit-driven, mad organization in the history of the world — that of the U.S. government?”

The only possible category of unprotected speech this might fall into is that of incitement — and it falls far, far short of the bar. The First Amendment protects most anti-government speech, even when it is really ugly or aggressive, and the only time “incitement” loses protection is when someone intends to spark immediate illegal action right now through their expression, and that said illegal action is actually likely to happen. Merely encouraging violence in general, in the future, or in some set of potential circumstances does not typically qualify. Famously, in Hess v. Indiana, the Supreme Court said that a protester’s controversial line that got him arrested — “we’ll take the fucking street later” — was protected. The speaker wasn’t calling for immediate action, but at some unspecified time in the future — “later.”

Earlier this week, Texas State community members protested in support of Robinson. In an absurd twist, an administrator confronted Alter, who was also there to support Robinson, and told him he was not allowed to protest on campus because he’s no longer affiliated with the university. Under a university policy adopted last September, individuals who are not affiliated with the university or sponsored by a student group are not allowed to protest on campus, except in very specific free speech zones. The same policy also prohibits expressive activities on campus between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. (FIRE has argued that this policy violates the First Amendment, as it is unnecessarily broad and empowers administrators to censor protected speech, and last October we also successfully obtained a preliminary injunction issued preventing the University of Texas System from enforcing this ban on expressive activities between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.)

Alter argued that the First Amendment trumped university policy. (It does.) The administrator eventually allowed him to stay, but took away his sign and told him not to participate in the protest. So the official position of the state was that he could stay in the free speech zone and be near the protest, but he just couldn’t participate. This makes no sense, but is the sort of absurd outcome that can happen when a university institutes such sweeping restrictions on free speech on campus. Public universities cannot wave a magic wand and severely restrict anyone unaffiliated with the university from demonstrating in public areas on campus. As public institutions bound by the First Amendment, they must respect the rights of members of the public to demonstrate in certain areas on campus, and they cannot arbitrarily cabin those demonstrations to one or two small places on campus.

Sadly, these two lawsuits are shocking but not surprising. Texas universities have been flouting the First Amendment for months. And while people are fighting back, there’s still no end in sight. Now faculty members must go to court to vindicate their First Amendment rights — and the rights of generations of students and faculty to come.

Free speech advocates have long warned that the laws and regulations passed at the state, federal, and international level are chipping away at our ability to speak anonymously online. The latest news out of the European Union has supercharged these concerns as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the rollout of an age verification app, one that will require a passport or ID card, to member states. Meanwhile, Turkey is threatening to gut that right directly, offering a perfect example of the threats online identity verification poses. And the Turkish government says that social media platforms are playing along.

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According to Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, the Turkish government is submitting a proposal to parliament that would require people to provide a national ID number to use social media. Unregistered accounts will be removed by platforms. Gürlek also claims platforms have agreed to implement these terms — though which platforms, and which exact terms, are not entirely clear yet.

Gürlek says ending anonymity is necessary to fight crime on the internet — and personal insults. “If someone insults someone or carries out a character assassination on social media,” he warns, “they must bear the consequences.”

Given that Turkey has prosecuted thousands of people, children included, for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, this measure will no doubt contribute to the government’s already draconian efforts to obliterate even light-hearted government criticism. (Also, if you weren’t aware of the extent to which the crackdown on presidential insults goes: The trials — plural — over internet memes comparing Erdoğan to the Tolkien character Gollum even have their own Wikipedia page.)

This is exactly what FIRE and other advocates have been warning about: Many of these efforts that erode people’s ability to speak anonymously online are sold as if they are necessary to protect kids from harm, or protect societies from crime and dysfunction. The EU’s new age verification app, which will offer over two dozen countries a streamlined process to verify identities, is promoted under the same guise. But ultimately, they will hand governments yet another tool designed to protect themselves from criticism under the guise of preventing online harms.

Make no mistake: These kinds of regulations are like a bad cold — they spread fast and are hard to shake. Governments and legislators around the world are constantly peeking over the fence at their neighbors to see what policies they’re rolling out and asking themselves whether they, too, can enact such laws.

You shouldn’t be surprised when more nations ask, If Turkey can do away with that pesky anonymous internet speech, why can’t we? In fact, the sentiment already exists in democratic nations freer than Turkey. In February, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for an end to anonymous posts. “I want to see real names on the internet,” he said. “I want to know who is speaking.” Coincidentally or not, Germany also prosecutes insults to public officials. Not long after Merz’s statements, police investigated a Facebook comment calling Merz “Pinocchio.”

Anonymous online speech is in peril even here in the United States. In 2023, then-presidential candidate Nikki Haley walked back her demand that companies “verify every single person” using their platforms “by name.” The idea was toxic at the time, and she faced backlash among conservatives. But in the years since, that campaign has ballooned. The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, which enjoys Democratic and Republican support, as well as the constantly growing list of state-level age-verification bills in red and blue states are putting a real strain on Americans’ ability to remain anonymous, whether they are 16 years old or 60.

And while supporters of age-verification tools argue that their methods are not the same as having to hand your real name and identity directly to the government, it nevertheless saws away at crucial barriers between anonymous speakers and government oppression. Once the link between your account and your identity exists, your anonymity is destroyed no matter what pseudonym you post under, as recent unsettling events make clear.

The Trump administration has waged a campaign to unmask citizens who have used the internet to discuss or criticize their government. A Washington Post investigation from February revealed that the Department of Homeland Security is abusing oversight-free administrative subpoenas to demand online services provide identifying information of users who engage in protected speech, like a man who sent an email about the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker on humanitarian parole.

We need the ability to speak anonymously online, whether to criticize our leaders, search for embarrassing medical advice, or even just to ask the age-old question: r/AmItheAsshole? What’s happening in Turkey should signal a clear shot across the bow. We need to fight for this right, or we are going to lose it. Fast.